


By Any Other Name

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, character introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Malcolm is starting a new phase in his life and it’s off to a much rougher start than he imagined it would.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
> 
> **Notes:** Written for 3AM_moonlight for the prompt of Any, any, moving away and changing identity and for the allbingo prompt of sense of temperature and temperature change

_“Remember your name. Do not lose hope ---what you seek will be found.”― Neil Gaiman_

Malcolm sat on his new apartment’s cozy balcony, studying his surroundings. The Boston chill had been traded for Virginia’s humid warmth, the change in temperatures almost staggering. Not, however, as staggering as the hot and cold tempers blowing his way from all the other changes he had just made in his life. Malcolm sipped his coffee, wondering how what he considered to be positive changes turned into so much high drama.

Strike that, he knew exactly how. His family was the purest definition of drama, at least the family he’d been born to. The one he adopted along the way took a more low-key approach but even the Arroyos had been stirred up by his choices. Malcolm sighed.

He’d been mentally prepared for the intensity of seeing his father for the last time, or so he had thought. He commended himself for not breaking down until he was back in the car where Gil had waited for him with a box of tissues and the shortest route to their favorite pub memorized. 

Malcolm knew his father would hate the idea of him going to Quantico. He had waited for his acceptance letter before informing him and for him to graduate from Harvard a second time. That didn’t mean he was entirely ready for the look of loathing that proceeded his father’s joking reminder that he was a serial killer and that the FBI would never really accept Malcolm as a result. What did Martin Whitly know? The FBI would treasure Malcolm’s keen insight into the mind of killers. He was sure of it. His degrees in psychology from Harvard would help to guarantee it. The FBI had snapped him right up, even before he graduated. May had taken forever to get there after that, still crisp when his family converged on the city to see him walk across that stage for a second time with his master’s degree. 

His father’s gaze had sliced him as surely as his scalpel had his victims. In that moment between his confession about Quantico and his father reestablishing his joking, charming demeanor, there had been a look of such violence it chilled Malcolm. That was his father’s true face. Malcolm’s mind had flipped to a conversion a few years before when he asked his father how he would kill him if he could. As that hot, sharp look overtook him, Malcolm knew his father entertained a thought of killing him if only for a second. 

But it was the expression that came after that tore Malcolm down to the ground. The panic, the fear in his father’s voice when Malcolm assured him he was never coming there again almost made him change his mind. He was proud of himself for standing strong. He had walked out of there with such faked confidence his father didn’t guess that if he had handled it different Malcolm might have caved – at least until he regained his senses. He couldn’t be in the FBI if he were talking routinely with a serial killer. Instead his father lashed out in rage. ‘This isn’t what I want.’

And that was it, wasn’t it? Everything had always been about what Martin Whitly wanted. His warped desires won out even over his children’s welfare. He’d thrown them away for the chance to do what he wanted. That’s what malignant narcissists did. Malcolm had walked out with barely a glance back, as if he would turn to salt like Lot’s wife. He saved his emotional catharsis for Gil’s Le Mans. Only Gil knew just how hard it was for him to cut that tether to his father. He could never tell his mother. She would never understand.

Malcolm expected his moving away, his new adventure, would have been met with more enthusiasm by the rest of his family than it had been by his father. Maybe Gil was right. He _was_ still young and a bit naïve. What should have been a happy time had been tarnished from the start. He had no idea what his mother thought he was going to do with a master’s degree in forensic psychology but apparently law enforcement never crossed her mind. Maybe she never paid attention to the word ‘forensic’ when he talked to her about classes. Maybe she thought he was going to set up therapy sessions for her elite friends – what few she had left. 

Him being an FBI agent was going to be the death of her. If she didn’t die of embarrassment that he was a civil servant, she would worry herself to death that he was going to get shot every other day. In retrospect, Malcolm should have realized she’d react like this. Maybe he should have waited until she had a few cocktails to go with her valium and then explain he was moving to Virginia. 

The thing that took him by surprise – the thing he’d need another cup of coffee to process – was how fast his mother had turned on Gil. Like a viper, she struck hard and fast and nearly as deadly. In an instant, years of friends with Gil and Jackie were over. They were to never darken her door again. How dare Gil use his influence over Malcolm to lure him into law enforcement? How dare he put Malcolm at risk? It was Gil’s fault her baby was going to be found shot to death somewhere and she never wanted to see him again.

Pushing back from his outside table, Malcolm went into his apartment, wound his way past the still unpacked boxes and fetched himself more coffee. The look of hurt and anger on Gil’s face would haunt him. Malcolm had tried to apologize for his mother, to write it off as fear for his welfare but her words had struck mortal wounds. Gil and Jackie left the Milton homestead both devastated and offended.

Malcolm threw in an extra dollop of brown rock sugar into his coffee, stirring vigorously before rethreading the needle out to his balcony. The sunlight warmed him but hadn’t made him feel much better. The pain still knotted behind his sternum. Gil had been _crushed_ by Malcolm’s choice. Maybe not crushed but definitely disappointed, he argued with himself. Gil knew how good the FBI could be, how Malcolm could be at the pinnacle of his abilities there. But Gil had wanted Malcolm to be NYPD.

Malcolm should have expected it. Damn, he would have to learn to read people even better than he thought he did. Maybe he merely had a blind eye to his own family. Gil felt rejected by Malcolm’s choice as if local law enforcement hadn’t been good enough for him. Ainsley at least had been relatively uninterested in Malcolm’s choice other than to wish him well. It was Jackie who had given him a bear hug and kisses to his cheek. She said she’d say a rosary for him. He didn’t remind her that he wasn’t Catholic because he appreciated the thought. For that matter, he didn’t think the Arroyos were all _that_ Catholic either but she had given him a Saint Michael’s medal as a congratulations for getting into Quantico. Malcolm loved her for it though he suspected it would spend most of the time in his drawer next to his various cuff links. At least someone didn’t seem disappointed or furious he was going to be an FBI agent. It hurt and left him lonely that only Jackie seemed to approve or care. This was supposed to be a happy time.

Sipping the coffee, he tried to pick out if there were anyone out and about at the apartment complex, or anything he could glean from his neighbor’s balconies that could tell him something about the people he lived around. Malcolm wasn’t sure it would matter. Quantico would keep him busy, and when he was finished, his job would gift him with odd, long hours. But if he met someone in the halls, he no longer had to worry they might recognize his name and realize he was the son of a monster. He had left Malcolm Whitly behind in Boston.

Malcolm Bright was who was going into Quantico. Malcolm Bright didn’t have a serial killer for a father. Bright might not even confess to the fact he came from one of the richest families in New York City. The Miltons had been part of the Astor’s 300 back in the day. That level of wealth only served to isolate him from his fellow agents. Hopefully, no one would ask too many questions about his family. 

He'd been planning this new identity for years. Malcolm had wanted to go for the name change as soon as he hit eighteen but he’d gotten into Harvard early. He was, if nothing else, as bright as his new moniker. At sixteen going on seventeen, he’d been too young to change his name legally without his mother’s help, and there was no way she was going to give it. Once he started school having to change his name on all the paperwork seemed too daunting so he let it go until the last year so it would be on his diploma. That’s when his mother learned of it.

He’d chickened out and told her just before she left to go sit with the other parents at graduation. He knew she’d spend the time at his small graduation party behaving herself. Jessica Whitly wouldn’t make a public scene because he did have a few friends there. Had it just been her, Ainsley and the Arroyos, she have gnawed him like a tiger with a hunk of steak. She’d blistered him afterward but he stood firm. Malcolm Whitly was gone and he wasn’t coming back. 

Why should he have to suffer carrying the name of a serial killer? Why should she? He didn’t understand why she didn’t just go back to Milton but for all he knew and understood the minds of killers, his mother remained a bit of a puzzle to him. Maybe he just didn’t want to see behind the curtain. He was very happy to be Malcolm Bright, and his mother’s reaction to it wasn’t going to put a pall on his new identity. In the end, she coped with pretending it was just something he was doing for the FBI because they wouldn’t let him in as a Whitly. He was finally going through his teenaged rebellion phase a few years too late.

Whatever got her through the day, he decided. Gil and Jackie had been more understanding, of course. They probably thought as he did, the change was long overdue. Malcolm Whitly had suffered for years because of his connect to Martin Whitly, The Surgeon. Malcolm would love to think that the change of job, location and name would bring with it a change in his mental state. Oh, if it were only that easy. He expected the nightmares to remain. He’d paid extra to have workers sound proof his bedroom so not to disturb other residents. He could imagine what they thought that was for. 

He didn’t care. He was looking forward to being Special Agent Malcolm Bright. When he started the training next week, he was going to shine. He might not be able to control his dramatic family or his crappy mental state but he could do this. He _would_ do this. He had to believe Malcolm Bright could do what he set his mind to. If not, then what was any of this about? Smiling to himself, Bright imagined life from this moment. 

For once it was going to go his way.


End file.
